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Author
Topic: help me understand my counts (Read 5043 times)

Hi all, was back for more blood today, got a look over my last two sets and am a little confused first results CD4 360, V/L 16000 no medssecond results CD4 347, V/L 8700 started medsbeen on the meds for 25 days now and apart from a bad rash that has come lasted 1 week and now gone I'm fine fingers crossed.

I'm just a little confused why both counts dropped with no meds. Also my infection time is a wonder as i can only pinpoint one time i should any tell tale signs was Feb this year. Can lifestyle affect this. i work hard and was wondering if over training could be a poss for my numbers.

It is only natural to invest a lot of emotional energy in the test results, but in reality they are an indicator of the range of where you are at, rather than a precise measure. The results are reported with a lot of misleading precision -- if you remember your high school physics classes where you learned about significant digits, these results only have one or sometimes two significant digits even though they report a lot more than that.

So if you took two blood draws on the same day you wouldn't be likely to get identical results.

Current guidelines are that a significant change is more than plus or minus 30% on the CD4 count and one third to three times on the viral load.

Zola, those aren't significant differences and are well within normal variations and test tolerances, especially the CD4. What is important is that your viral load becomes undetectable and your CD4 begins an upward trend, now that you are on meds. You may not see an increase in CD4 every time, but that is ok as long as the general trend over several tests is upward.

It's good to see that you are tolerating treatment. You should be about due for another lab test. I would expect the viral load to already be undetectable, or close, since you started with such a low number. Your doctor can tell you if you are "overtraining".

hi all, just got the latest results after being on the meds for about 4 weeks,CD4-396V/L-76really chuffed thingds seem to be going well. just in the process off getting a new doc as i've moved hope it goes just as well. will keep yous informed.

As far as I know it's really the trend, rather than just the absolute numbers.. I was having two opposing trends that I could not understand: over the last 6 months (4 labs, no meds) CD4 was declining constantly (480, 350, 290, 305, 280) so the trend is def DOWN, but VL - at the same time - was also decreasing (36K, 32K, 30K, 28K)...So while I understand numbers are not precise - VL still shows a constant trend of slow decrease thou CD4 has really fallen and I'm about to start meds now..

your looking for an explanation as to why both counts are falling, yep me to seems a lot to understand that before i was on the meds both sets of numbers would both drop. i was of the basic thinking that if cd4 is down v/l would probs be up and vice-versa any heads up guys.

As you can see from my signature, my CD4 counts have gone up and down over the course of time, and that's pretty normal, as long as you're staying undetectable. I wouldn't sweat it, and hopefully the long-term trend will be positive.

Hi all, its been a while but here i go. Having just got my latest counts there seems to be no change for the past year, now while i', not complaining i cant get my head round why my CD4 is not climbing.